Immigration Clash Leaves Vidalia Onion Farmers Bitter

May 28, 1998|By Ginger Thompson, Tribune Staff Writer.

GLENNVILLE, Ga. — To some 250 farmers in this southeastern corner of Georgia, springtime is like Christmas.

It is the season of the sweet Vidalia onion, and in May and June the fields are bustling with workers rushing to pick the onions--not only sweeter, but more delicate than their Texas cousins--before the sun turns them to mush.

This spring however, Christmas almost got canceled. Two weeks ago in an operation named Southern Denial, dozens of Immigration and Naturalization Service officers descended on some of the area's largest onion fields. Workers, mostly immigrants from Mexico, ran for cover in the wooded hills. Frantic farmers rushed to their fields and demanded that the agents get off their property.

"They had guns, but I didn't care," said Gerald Dasher, co-owner of G&R Farms. "I told them to get the hell off my land or somebody was going to get hurt. They had driven their vehicles right onto my field. They ran all over my onions."

The clash between the Vidalia onion growers and the immigration service illustrates a crisis that concerns farmers and farm worker advocates across the country. Farmers and nursery growers complain there are not enough domestic workers to help harvest their crops and so they have become dependent on undocumented immigrants--and are at odds with the INS.

On May 19, however, the parties reached a truce. With handshakes, rather than a signed accord, the INS agreed to halt the raids and give the onion pickers temporary amnesty until the end of the harvest. The farmers promised that for future harvests, they will comply with labor and immigration laws. The Vidalia harvest, with an estimated worth of $90 million, was saved.

"I've been in this 22 years and I have never done anything like this," said Bart Szafnicki, one of the INS officials who brokered the deal. "It is absolutely unprecedented and it is very unlikely to happen again."

Szafnicki said he realized that onion farmers have a limited window of time--about four to six weeks--to get their crop harvested.

"They live and die on those four to six weeks," he said. ". . . I thought that stopping the operation and trying to negotiate a settlement was better than bankrupting a bunch of farmers."

In Vidalia onion country, 20 counties that lie between Macon and Savannah, the INS estimates that 70 percent to 90 percent of the 10,000 pickers are undocumented immigrants. The Labor Department estimates there are some 2.5 million farm workers in the U.S., and that at least 35 percent of them are in the country illegally.

For years, farmers have lobbied Congress to create new programs that would make it easier for them to hire temporary foreign workers, so-called "guest workers." The current guest worker program, called H-2A, is too expensive and the application process is too complicated, the farmers said. The program requires farmers to pay transportation costs for workers from their homeland to the farms, to provide housing to all workers and to spend several weeks advertising the job openings around the country.

The Labor Department also requires the farmers to pay salaries that will not depress wages for other workers in the area.

"There are so many restrictions to H-2A that it's unbelievable," said Devory Dowdy, 38, who with his father runs a farm that harvests 350 acres of sweet onions. "None of the farmers can afford to use it."

Legislation setting up a pilot program that would allow farmers to hire 20,000 guest workers has been introduced in the House and Senate. After the recent raids, many of Georgia's sweet onion growers said they will campaign harder to get those proposals adopted and perhaps expanded.

"There might be 5 percent unemployment in the U.S. but none of that 5 percent wants to work in an onion field," said Delbert Bland, whose farm produces 20 percent of the state's Vidalia onion crop.

Opponents argue that the proposed Temporary Agricultural Worker Act would eliminate any chance that American workers have to get farm work. They point to a recent study by the congressional General Accounting Office, which said there is no shortage of domestic farm labor and that none is likely to develop.

The GAO surveyed the 20 largest agricultural counties in the country and found double digit unemployment in 13. In all but one, unemployment was higher than the national average. Officials at the Georgia Department of Labor said that in Tattnall County, which has the highest Vidalia production of any other county, unemployment last year was equal to the March national average of 5 percent.

In a report last year, the U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform concluded that guest worker programs expand rural poverty and are "incompatible with the values of democratic societies worldwide." It was the third national immigration commission in 16 years to conclude that agricultural guest worker programs would increase illegal immigration and lead to further exploitation of farm workers.